


steal and crafted elegance

by rabbitinthewoods



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitinthewoods/pseuds/rabbitinthewoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Romanoff terrifies Darcy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	steal and crafted elegance

**Author's Note:**

> just messing with characters

Agent Romanoff terrifies Darcy. The first time they meet is in a plain S.H.E.I.L.D room that Darcy is gently shepherded into by a nameless agent, sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair and talked at for half an hour about security and non-disclosure agreements. A red headed woman stands in a corner, and her presence makes the room ten times smaller. She gives no twitch of her lips, no impatient sigh, no tic or mannerism to suggest she has any emotion about proceedings at all. Darcy can’t help but feel she is being measured by this red headed woman and found so severely lacking she has dropped below zero and into the cold of a vacuum.

She holds her liquor well, this woman, not like a human but like some bottomless pit of steal and crafted elegance. The one time Darcy makes the mistake of trying to match her drink for drink the evening smears into echoing sounds and a feeling of weightlessness, like an out of body experience; the next morning she wakes with a woodpecker in her skull and her body lying in painful apathy over a pile of books whose titles don’t even come into focus when she rolls off them. Thor enters soon after her ignoble awakening, for once not a bright booming behemoth but quiet and soft. He scoops her onto a sofa and hands her some water.

He whispers as she sips her drink down. “You did well, Lady Darcy.”

“Well?” Darcy’s voice has cracks and rough patches she has never heard before, and her breath smells like a rotting brewery.

“Aye, to challenge the Lady Natasha as you did. A valiant effort.”

Darcy only nods, not willing to speak again.

Later, she will drag herself into the kitchen. Agent Romanoff will be there, a cup of coffee in hand. She will look at Darcy. She will smile. Darcy will blush and walk into a cupboard and be more terrified of her than ever. But she will wonder if a smile means she is no longer so far down the measuring stick.


End file.
